Greg Mortenson
Greg Mortenson
Greg Mortensonis an American humanitarian, professional speaker, writer, and former mountaineer. He is a co-founder and former executive director of the non-profit Central Asia Institute, from which he was forced to resign as executive director following an investigation by the Montana attorney general, and the founder of the educational charity Pennies for Peace...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionWriter
CountryUnited States of America
football country thinking
Haji Ali taught me the most important lesson I've ever learned in my life...We Americans think you have to accomplish everything quickly. We're the country of thirty-minute power lunches and two-minute football drills. Haji Ali taught me to share three cups of tea, to slow down and make building relationships as important as building projects.
children hate people
I've learned that terror doesn't happen because some group of people somewhere like Pakistan or Afghanistan simply decide to hate us. It happens because children aren't being offered a bright enough future that they have a reason to choose life over death.
mean kids done
When your kids accomplish something it means much more than anything you've done.
girl hands bombs
You can hand out condoms, drop bombs, build roads, or put in electricity, but until the girls are educated a society won’t change.
ties camels trust-in-allah
Trust in Allah, but tie up your camel.' Sign in Skardu
past perspective found
. . . hope resides in the future, while perspective and wisdom are almost always found by looking to the past.
people world who-we-are
the people who live in the last places - the people who are most neglected and least valued by the larger world - often represent the best of who we are and the finest standard of what we are meant to become. This is the power that last places hold over me, and why I have found it impossible to resist their pull.
business important down-and
Slow down and make building relationships as important as building projects.
girl religious children
It is my vision that we all will dedicate the next decade to achieve universal literacy and education for all children, especially for girls. More than 145 million of the world's children are deprived of education due to poverty, exploitation, slavery, gender discrimination, religious extremism, and corrupt governments. May Three Cups of Tea be a catalyst to bring the gift of literacy to each of those children who deserves a chance to go to school.
caring priorities widows
Just as the Torah and Bible teach concern for those in distress, the Koran instructs all Muslims to make caring for widows, orphans, and refugees a priority.
appreciate childhood paradise
The older I get, the more I appreciate my childhood. It was paradise.
inspiration compassion rivers
When ordinary human beings perform extraordinary acts of generosity, endurance or compassion, we are all made richer by their example. Like the rivers that flow out of the Karakoram and the Hindu Kush, the inspiration they generate washes down to the rest of us. It waters everyone's fields.
men virtue understood
He was a man who understood the virtue of small things.
wise home school
A wise man from my home once told me that these mountains have seen far too much suffering and killing, and that each rock and every boulder you see represents a mujahadeen who died fighting either the Russians or the Taliban. Then the man went on to say that now that the fighting is finished, it is time to build a new era of peace-and the first step in that process is to take up the stones and start turning them into schools.